Nickelodeon alum Jennette McCurdy surprised fans when she first detailed her abusive relationship with her mother, Debra McCurdy.
Jennette and her three older brothers were raised in California by Debra and father Mark McCurdy. (The actress would later find out that Mark was not her biological dad.) As a child, Jennette’s mother encouraged her to start acting, which led to her rising to stardom for portraying Sam Puckett on iCarly from 2007 to 2012.
While Jennette was making people laugh on screen, behind the scenes she had a tumultuous relationship with her mother, who introduced her to several eating disorders and forced her to continue acting.
Following Debra’s death from cancer in 2013, Jennette briefly continued to book roles before stepping away from acting. She pivoted to writing and used her personal essays as inspiration for a one-woman dark comedy show: I’m Glad My Mom Died. This ultimately became the jumping off point for Jennette’s 2022 memoir of the same name, which is now being adapted into an Apple TV+ dramedy series with Jennifer Aniston cast as Debra.
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“Of course, there are moments where I fantasize that my mom would’ve apologized or that we’d have a turnaround in our relationship, but that’s fantasy,” Jennette told Vogue in August 2022 about reflecting on her complicated relationship with her mother. “That’s a lot of what the book is about to me, not needing to romanticize the dead and validate our own experience with them.”
She continued: “I feel very confidently that if my mom were still alive, I’d still have eating disorders. I’d still be having a lot of mental health struggles. I’m sure she and I would still live in the same place and I would have no chance of being in a relationship or having any friends. I have no doubt my life would still be very controlled by her if she were alive.”
Keep scrolling for Jennette’s most candid comments about Debra’s abuse — and her healing journey in the wake of her mother’s death:
Finding Her Voice
“My earliest memories of childhood were of heaviness, and chaos,” Jennette told People in October 2021. “My mom’s emotions were so erratic that it was like walking a tightrope every day. The mood fluctuations were daily.”
Jennette noted it took a long time for her to find her “identity” without her mother. She was able to reach a point though where she finally felt “free.”
Breaking Her Silence
Before her memoir hit shelves, Jennette opened up about her eating disorder and a stunted adolescence.
“It’s something I mean sincerely,” Jennette told BuzzFeed News in August 2022 about the title of her book. “I’m genuinely glad. If she were alive, I’d still be trapped. Every important decision in my life wouldn’t have been possible.”
Jennette also recalled wanting to leave the entertainment industry following her mother’s death. “I think seeing yourself is particularly difficult with growing up in the public eye, because you’re so public-facing and seen as one thing,” she continued. “That makes the reality of you so much more unseen and invalidated and unacknowledged. But now, because I see myself, I can accept being seen by others.”
Unpacking the Trauma
According to I’m Glad My Mom Died, Debra insisted on performing vaginal and breast exams on Jennette and never let her daughter shower alone until she was 17 years old. Jennette also opened up about how her mother controlled her appearance, which included bleaching her hair and whitening her teeth when she was 10 years old.
Struggling With an Eating Disorder
Debbie allegedly introduced Jennette to calorie counting one year later, which led to Jennette’s eating disorder.
“It’s quite unfortunate, but my mom taught me anorexia. She taught me calorie restriction when I was 11,” Jennette said during a September 2022 episode of Facebook Watch’s Red Table Talk. “And I knew that my mom really wanted me to stay young. She really, really made that clear to me. She would sob and really clutch me intensely and say, like, ‘I don’t want my baby to grow up.’ ”
She continued: “I knew me growing up would mean us separating, and I didn’t want that to happen, so I asked if there was a way that I could stop the boobies from coming in, and she told me, ‘Well, there’s a thing called calorie restriction.’
In her book, Jennette recalled not getting her period for years because of her weight struggles.
“The truth is that I wish I had anorexia, not bulimia. I’m pining for anorexia. I’ve grown humiliated by bulimia, which I used to think of as the best of both worlds — eat what you want, throw it all up, stay thin,” Jennette detailed in her book. “But now it doesn’t feel like the best of both worlds. It feels terrible. I’m filled with so much shame and anxiety every time after I eat.”
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Controlling Behavior
Elsewhere in her memoir, Jennette discussed developing a complicated relationship with sex due to her religion and her mother’s controlling behavior. Jennette wrote how her first sexual encounter was when she was 18 and her partner was 32.
Defending Her Book Title
Jennette’s memoir went on to become a bestseller but she has still had to defend the shocking title since then.
“I wanted something that was bold and also something that I meant sincerely. I would never use a bold and attention-grabbing title if it weren’t authentic,” she told The Hollywood Reporter when the book debuted. “I would never do it if it were just coming from a flippant place. That’s not my approach to humor. I knew that anybody who had experienced parental abuse would understand the title, and anybody who had a sense of humor would understand the title.”
Jennette also addressed her family’s reaction to the memoir.
“My brothers have been so supportive, so understanding,” she added about her siblings, to whom she dedicated the book. “They get the title, to put it simply. It was also a title that I knew I wanted early on.”
Putting in the Work
The former child star admitted it took a while for her to feel comfortable discussing her past.
“Because it’s so personal, I felt like it was important that I had a lot of experience in therapy,” Jennette told THR. “I didn’t sit down with a therapist and say: ‘So I want to write a memoir. How can we get me to a place where I’ve got the perspective to do it?’ But it was several years of really intense therapy before I started feeling like I could explore all that personal stuff creatively.”
Jennette credited therapy for helping her heal from her trauma.
“My mind just went: ‘Is it possible to be so full of s*** that you can’t see when you’re full of s***?’ And then I was like: ‘No, I think I’ve done too much therapy for that,’” she explained. “I consider myself fully recovered from eating disorders, and I’m really, really proud of that. And yet, I think that elements of my relationship with my mom will always be something that I’m exploring in some way, whether that’s just subconsciously kicking around or whether that’s creatively. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It doesn’t feel retraumatizing for me to explore that relationship creatively.”
Her Memory of Her Mother
During an appearance on The Daily Show in September 2022, Jennette was asked whether she hates her mom.
“I definitely don’t hate my mom,” she noted. “I think she was a really complicated and nuanced person, and I try to kind of articulate her to the best of my ability, and all her many shades and colors.”
